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This article engages with the legal regulation of end-of-existence decisionmaking for novel beings, specifically assisted nonexistence for such entities. The author explains the concept of a legal model for assisted death by reference to the substantive features of legal regimes in three jurisdictions in which assisted suicide or euthanasia is lawful. He considers how these models might fit novel beings who may require or prefer assistance to end their own existence by reference to the constituent features—abstract legal ingredients—that models for assisted death share. The author argues that extant models may block some novel beings' access to end-of-existence assistance or fail to track what matters to them. He then examines the merits of adopting a universal model for assisted nonexistence, that is, a legal framework whose substantive features capture the end-of-existence concerns of both human and novel beings. Consideration of a unified legal framework may illuminate the discussion of assisted nonexistence for humans and novel beings. However, the paper proposes that whereas novel beings may have similar interests to humans, they may be relevantly different also. The prima facie case for adopting a one regime to rule us all approach to assisted nonexistence may be defeated by reasons for divergent regulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We apply nonlinear Autoregressive-Distributed Lag (ARDL)-based methodologies to examine the nature of the effects of changes in R&D (intensity) on the employment rates of 'high-skill', 'medium-skill' and 'low-skill' labour and also whether or not these effects are symmetric. The empirical results based on the annual data for the period of 1991–2017 have suggested that while increased R&D has favourable effects on the employment rate of 'high-skill' labour in France, it has a negative impact on this type of labour in the UK. On the other hand, while the given increase in R&D has been found to be negatively affecting the employment rates of both 'low-skill' and 'medium-skill' labour in France, it has no impact on the employment rates of these two types of labour in the UK. These results may suggest that the dominant form of technological change in France is possibly a combination of 'low-skill automation' and 'task-based' whereby new technologies are simultaneously leading to replacement of 'low-skill' and 'medium-skill' labour by machines and the creation of new tasks (jobs) in which 'high-skill' labour has a comparative advantage. In the UK, the dominant form of new technologies resulting from additional R&D efforts seems to be in the form of 'high-skill automation' whereby 'Robotics and Artificial Intelligence' kind of new technologies might be causing replacement of 'high-skill' labour with machines. These results suggest that new technologies might be exerting adverse effects on income distribution in different ways in the UK and France. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]